March 18, 2010
Bus Jump
So yeah, if Hacking Timbuktu ever gets made into a film, these are the guys I want to play Danny and Omar!
March 17, 2010
March Flood Update
Another letter from Alan Dixon in Ouagadougou. If you would like to make a donation which will benefit homeless families and/or reconstruction, you can make a secure online donation here. In the box titled 'Missionary or Project Name', please type BF General 93918 Ouagadougou Flood Relief. Thank you so much.
As temperatures edge into the forties, the humidity hovers around 20%, and a heavy layer of harmattan dust blankets the city of Ouagadougou, memories of the flood of September 1 have dimmed. For many thousands of people in Ouagadougou, however, the aftermath remains a daily reality. On Tuesday we visited Paspanga, one of the several neighborhoods largely destroyed in the flood, and visited the local SIM-related church and several of the 22 families whom we are helping with reconstruction. The local church has identified the neediest families in the neighborhood and with the help of another organization, Burkina Faso Outreach, we are helping with reconstruction, providing food-aid, and providing school fees for a number of families. Other than for this input and that of Compassion International, which is also rebuilding some homes for families of sponsored children, this neighborhood has benefited from very little outside help and remains for the most part, in ruins.
Last week we were also in Yagma, the resettlement site for many who lost their homes on September 1. On our first visit there just before Christmas we had encountered only a hundred or so new arrivals living in makeshift shelters made of sacks of cement and grass mats. Yagma is now a growing community of several thousand, mostly living in temporary shelters, with many in the process of erecting permanent structures on the small building lots allocated to them. Several wells have been drilled and water is being trucked in to provide water for construction. The Red Cross has been especially impressive in the scale and quality of their involvement in this resettlement effort.
With the help of a few of the newly settled local residents, we have been able to identify and begin meeting with small groups of widows, about 180 women in total, in order to help them re-establish themselves and find new means of earning a living and providing for their children. We have arranged micro-credit loans for thirty women to help them start or expand small businesses and have financed the beginning of a small soap-making business for another group of ten. We met with leaders of AFEC (the women’s group of the SIM-related church) on Thursday to see how they may get involved with us in reaching out in other ways to this group of women, some of the most vulnerable in the growing settlement. We will visit Yagma with them this week.
A group of seven tents make up the growing primary school in Yagma. A week ago the number of students in the school had grown to 405 with new arrivals each day. The grade one class has 120. Following a request from the Parents Association of the school, we have begun providing food for a noon-meal program for the students. This we hope to be able to continue through the remainder of the school year, with several of the moms doing the cooking.
Alison continues her coordination of English for Everyone with 105 students enrolled in six classes. Thanks for praying for the teachers and for the spiritual impact of this program. We have a team visiting from England this week who will be helping out with classes and who will participate in a games night for the students at the end of the week. Leadership classes continue to add an element of challenge to my schedule. One week of teaching in Fada at the end of February reinforced for me our need to continue to plug away at modeling and teaching biblically-based principles of leadership to our current and upcoming leaders. I have begun facilitating a course on Integrity and Finance with a class of eleven at IMS, our mission training school here in Ouaga, and I travel to Burundi for a week at the end of the month to facilitate a new course (for me) on Conflict Management and Resolution.
Life is full. Thanks for your part in helping us serve in this way.
Alan and Alison
